Fat Man and Littbo: Beneath the Atomic City

By Dave Westcott

The Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man General Leslie R. Groves believed that to achieve success that he should start with superb and gifted people and that young people would normally be more energetic, confident, and curious and thus be more likely to work harder and longer.
General Groves was a career military engineer during World War II and was responsible for the construction of the Pentagon and numerous installations and factories that played major roles in the Manhattan Project’s making of the Atomic Bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945.
Fat Man and Littbo…Beneath the ATOMIC CITY is a novel that describes the unlikely pairing of a teenage boy living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee with the famous General, and how everyday life twisted and turned until the entire secret mission unraveled at the seams and completely re-directed the outcome of the war effort.
The novel traces personal life in the Atomic City from illicit affairs, moonshining and bootlegging, secret underground bunkers, the purchase of 1200 tons of uranium ore from a warehouse in New York, and to the final military battles on the Island of Tinian, and the flight of the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, Japan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483572604

Book preview

Bomb

Chapter One

Hardburly, Kentucky

1927 was a hell of a year for newsworthy and record-breaking events in the United States. Out in the Black Hills of South Dakota over 400 men began a 13-year project to carve the heads of four dead presidents into the granite at Mount Rushmore. Over in New York, the Holland Tunnel opened while Charlie Slim Lindbergh was taking off from Long Island on his 34-hour flight to Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis.

Down in Hardburly, Kentucky, coal miner Malcom Moneypenny and his wife Wilma were setting their own record by having their first child born in an actual hospital instead of at home by a midwife or a nurse from the Frontier Nursing Service.

Malcom and Wilma had been visiting Wilma’s sister Edith up in Pikeville, Kentucky, some seventy miles away from their home in Hardburly when her water broke. One minute she was sitting there drinking lemonade and threading leather britches beans onto a string so she could hang them up to dry, and the next minute she was squalling like a stuck pig and cussin’ Malcom for all the pain and suffering that she was about to endure, all on account of his inability to stop procreating more Moneypenny children.

Wilma had told him time and time again that the three they had were plenty, but Malcom, like his pappy who had nine kids, couldn’t seem to find anything worthwhile to do with his time when he wasn’t in the coal mine but jump on her bones.

There were only twenty hospitals in the State of Kentucky in 1928 and medical care during those times was primitive. Few of the inhabitants of Hardburly could afford to go to a hospital. Most infants were born at home and the mortality rate for newborns was understandably high. Malcom and Wilma Moneypenny were one of the few fortunate couples to use a hospital because they happened to be in the right place at the right time when those birthing pains started.

Wilma’s sister Edith had midwived a couple of kids in her time, but based on how they had turned out (not so good) she didn’t want any blame coming to her later from her own sister because of a kid she helped birth if it turned out to be a no-account.

Edith worked in the hospital office as a bookkeeper and when she heard of her sister’s impending labor, she told Wilma that she was sure that Doctor Reavis would take a look at her. Plus, it was only two blocks from Edith’s house on Park Street to the hospital and they could make it there in ten minutes using her horse and buggy.

They got there in five minutes and within the next two hours the baby was brought forth. Wilma was worrying everybody with her gasping and coughing and carrying on like she’d just had the wits scared out of her. Folks just kind of stood there frozen knowing that something big was about to happen but not knowing quite what to expect. Next thing you know Wilma was swaying her head back and forth, mumbling like a crazy woman.

Dr. Reavis told his staff that Wilma probably should have gone to the sanitarium instead of Pikeville Memorial because there was obviously something off balance with that woman.

Then all at once, Wilma turned her voice up a notch or two and spoke.

I ain’t takin’ it home…it’s as simple as that.

Whadya’ mean you ain’t takin’ it home, it’s our baby, said Malcom.

Ain’t no baby o’ mine look like that. Gimme’ one them other ones, but I ain’t takin’ that one home. She continued in a mumble. Hell fire, bring that thing home and even the dog would be trying to bury it.

Malcom turned her and her wheelchair around and tried to steer her out the door of the delivery room before any other new mothers started getting any ideas about baby swapping or ‘tradin’ up.’

Now Wilma, you’ve just had a rough time of it with the suddenness of it all and not bein’ at home where you could be comfortable, but you’ve just got to calm down some.

Wilma’s eyes got that big silver dollar look to them and she set her jaw and clenched her teeth. With her head turned to the side so Malcom could get the full effect she whispered, That baby is the tiniest lookin’ wrinkled-up damn thing I’ve ever seen. Ain’t no way that thing came out of either one of us. I had enough kids to know what they’se supposed to look like when they come out, and that one just ain’t right. Mix-ups happen all the time in these hospitals, and that’s why I didn’t want to come here in the first place. Who’s to say that ain’t what’s happened here?

Dammit Wilma Malcom said, "I was right outside the delivery room door and saw for my own eyes when that baby was brought out of the delivery room and placed on the table for the nurses to wrap up. Now don’t try to tell me about nobody doin’ no baby switchin’, cause I was right there and saw with my own eyes."

Wilma grabbed the wheels on the side of her chair and brought it to a stop, looking up, square into Malcom’s eyes. Dear God, tell me it ain’t so…tell me what we gonna do now? Then Wilma began to sob. It was a low moaning wail. Like what you might expect to hear from a cow that just got his head caught in a fence.

Malcom hurried her to the patient room and pulled the curtain around her bed as he tried to calm her.

A name, Wilma, we gotta come up with a name.

Wilma waved him off with that not now kind of palm out, let me catch my thoughts kind of a look. With tears running down her cheeks, she finally got up the courage to ask Malcom the most important question. What was it, a boy or a girl…dear God please tell me that little ball of wrinkles ain’t no boy.

It’s a boy, said Malcom. Our boy.

"You name him then, he’s yours too and I just can’t deal with it right now, said Wilma trying in vain to catch her breath. She recovered quickly as another thought came to her. Just don’t come up with another crazy name like Napoleon. Give it a name that won’t cause it a problem when it’s grown."

So there on that cold February day in 1927 was born into this world George Thomas Moneypenny, weighing in at four and a quarter pounds and at a length of sixteen and a half inches.

Once they got home, Wilma settled down pretty quick and started mothering just like she had the other Moneypenny kids. She took to calling the baby Little Boy in the beginning but then settled on a pet name for him, which was Littbo, and the modest, respectable name of George was all but forgotten forever.

Chapter Two

Early Days

World War II was in full swing in 1942 with the U.S. fully engaged. Military levels had more than doubled from the previous year to a combined strength of Army, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard troops of 3.9 million. Sixty-one percent of American soldiers were volunteers and they were there because they were mad, scared, patriotic and ready to take on the Nazis and the Japanese.

Combat losses were high and unacceptable to President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The U.S. had lost 549 soldiers in the Aleutians Campaign and another 307 had been killed at Midway during that year alone. Something had to be done.

Advances in science had contributed an idea that the U.S. could possibly build a Super Bomb and that the bomb would be so great and powerful that the country would be able to achieve world domination.

The U.S. Government and War Department had been made aware, through a letter from Albert Einstein in 1939, that as a result of uranium fission, this new phenomenon would lead to the construction of bombs and that the U.S. should speed up the experimental work….by providing funds and…obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.

Secretary of War Stimson, along with Vannevar Bush, the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, received permission from President Roosevelt and thus the Manhattan Project was created.

Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols was an Army Engineer, West Point grad and Deputy District Engineer under the Army’s District Engineer Colonel James C. Marshall.

In a somewhat whirlwind reorganization of duties, the Army’s Chief of Staff of Army Service Forces, Major General Wilhelm D. Styer, promoted Nichols to Marshall’s job as District Engineer and placed Colonel Leslie R. Groves in charge of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), which eventually became the Manhattan Project. Groves was quickly promoted to Brigadier General.

Over in Nashville, Tennessee, twenty-one-year-old photographer Ed Westcott was working for the Army Corps of Engineers making photographs at various Army projects including dams and other construction sites.

Ed’s boss, Joe Rudis, came to him one day and said Ed, I need you to travel over to East Tennessee near Knoxville and make some aerial photos for our offices in Washington. The photos will need to capture the farmland and mountain terrain just southwest of Knoxville. We found a barnstormer pilot over that way who can take you up in an airplane so you can shoot pictures from the open door. Ed was given the contact information and a government car and he headed off to Knoxville.

When he arrived in the Knoxville area, he was directed to a grass landing field over near the Edgemoor area close to Clinton, Tennessee. The business he was looking for was called the Knoxville Flying Service, and the operator, Guy Jones, was an instructor for the government flight school, hired to train young aviators who desired to become military pilots.

Jones was skeptical about Ed’s interest in flying over the area to take photographs because it didn’t make any sense to him.

Why do you want to do that? He asked Westcott. I don’t understand the government spending good tax-payer’s money making pictures of farms and valleys. Seems like they could spend our money on something more useful.

Ed brushed his hair back. I’m just following orders. My job is to make the pictures, not decide what to do with them.

I hope the damn government aren’t planning to uproot any more landowners like they did in ‘33 when they took all of the land for Norris Dam. We’ve had enough meddlin’ from Washington to last us a lifetime. Joe replied, chewing on his lip.

Jones didn’t say it out loud but his other suspicion about the government photographer was that he was somehow connected to the revenuers and was looking for the location of illegal moonshine stills. This worried Jones as he’d had a long career as a moonshiner and bootlegger. He had flown loads of illegal liquor from Canada into the United States during his flying career.

This suspicion led to further questioning and Ed was able to finally gain the confidence of the pilot. For the next few days, they flew in and out of the valleys northwest of Knoxville while Ed, with a strap around his waist to keep him from falling out of the plane, made dozens of photos of the area.

After the film was developed and prints were made, they were mailed off to Washington where the government used them to make the final selection for the site of the Manhattan Project, which was later named Oak Ridge.

After the site for the first Manhattan Project location was made in East Tennessee and within the following six-month period, Groves directed the acquisition of the 59,000 acres, constructed 300 miles of roads, 50 miles of railway, built an entire city complete with housing, schools, shopping centers, a hospital, recreational facilities a library and enough fencing and guard gates to keep the wrong people out and to keep the right people in. The electric power facility was large enough to power most major cities and eventually the Oak Ridge operations consumed nearly 1/7th of the electricity in the U.S.

The purpose of Oak Ridge was to figure out the best and quickest way to take uranium ore and refine it into bomb grade uranium by enriching the uranium through a separation process.

The Army was utilizing uranium ore from Colorado and New Mexico, which was extremely low in purity. To continue using the ore from U.S. mines would take longer and require larger quantities than those available.

Groves had heard about the possibility that there could be uranium ore of a higher purity in Africa so he called in his right-hand man, Colonel Nichols, the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) District Engineer, to investigate the possibility.

Ken, Groves said, we have a problem that I need you to focus on 100% until it is resolved satisfactorily. We need high-quality uranium ore and lots of it in order to provide enough material for separation. Our thoughts now are that we may need well over 1,000 tons of the right quality ore in order to convert enough U-235 for this device we are building. The ore coming out of Colorado and New Mexico has been surpassed in quality by some uranium ore from the Belgian Congo. The mine over there has been reported to produce 65% pure ore…a far higher quality than we have here in the U.S., and we want that ore for our processing plants.

Nichols responded, How can I help?

Groves went on to instruct Nichols to get over to the Congo, find out what it would take to obtain the uranium ore and get it back to Oak Ridge by the fastest means possible.

Nichols was accustomed to such demands from his boss, who he considered to be one of, if not the biggest, meanest and most arrogant bastards he had ever met, but as with most good soldiers, Nichols respected his authority and went right to work.

Colonel Nichols’s first step was to reach out to Army Intelligence and the State Department to gain any knowledge available about the U.S. contacts in the Congo and to formulate a plan for where he should start. The State Department was quick to respond and advised Nichols that the Shinkalowbe mine in Africa was under the control of the Belgian government and managed by a Belgian who had an office located in New York City. Nichols was happy with the first bits of information, especially with the notion that he may not need to travel all the way to Africa to find the uranium ore he needed.

The next day, as Nichols was making preparations to head to the Congo, he started getting some rumors that there was other ore available in the U.S. and then a man named Edgar Sengier contacted Nichols directly by telephone saying he had this ore and that the U.S. government would certainly want it. Somehow Sengier had found out that the project was interested in uranium but he did not know why, so when he called and asked about Nichols’s interest, Nichols put his Congo trip on hold and headed up to New York to meet with Sengier.

Nichols arrived at New York’s Grand Central Station and took a taxi to the Biltmore Hotel uptown on Madison Avenue. The next morning, he phoned Edgar Sengier and arranged to meet him in his office out on Staten Island. Nichols had arranged for an unmarked army car and driver to take him to Staten Island, some twenty miles away, and found the driver waiting when he left the hotel lobby.

Nichols had decided to wear his civilian clothes so he had to show the driver his military ID before he was let into the car. Once they arrived at Sengier’s office, Nichols instructed the driver to wait for him.

Nichols found the bank of offices in the building, which was a four-story warehouse, and introduced himself to Sengier. Sengier asked him what he wanted to see him about and Nichols told him that he understood that he had some uranium. Sengier questioned Nichols by asking if he was a Contracting Officer and Nichols responded that he was.

He next asked Nichols if he was authorized to make a purchase and Nichols responded that he probably had more authority than Sengier had uranium. That seemed to satisfy Sengier’s curiosity so they continued the conversation towards making a deal.

Sengier wanted the precious metals out of the uranium, especially the radium, so a deal was cut whereby Nichols would have immediate possession of the uranium. As it turned out, Sengier had 1,200 tons of 65% pure uranium contained in 2,007 metal barrels located on two floors of the warehouse.

Nichols was also able to establish a contract with Sengier for another 3,000 tons of uranium that was above ground at Shinkalowbe and asked Sengier to get busy on having the ore readied for shipment.

Nichols asked Sengier why he had the ore in the U.S. and Sengier responded that he had been following some of the work done by the French scientists before the war, and he knew the importance of the uranium as a possibility for military use.

Sengier had shipped some ore from the Congo to Belgium, which was captured by the Germans and finally rescued by General George S. Patton. Sengier was smart enough to understand that the ore must have a use and importance beyond removing the radium or the traditional use as a dye for ceramics. Sengier had set up his Staten Island office and warehouse as a speculation or on a hunch that whatever the use and value, the ore would be better off in the U.S. than in Europe where Hitler was still running rampant like a mad dog.

Nichols was successful in buying the uranium ore from Sengier and had it shipped to a processing facility at Port Hope, Ontario for processing into uranium yellow cake and then into uranium hexafluoride, a gas to be used in the large K-25 plant in Oak Ridge.

By 1942, there were four kids in the Moneypenny family including Mary Nell, Napoleon, Littbo and Rupert. Littbo, at fifteen, was the youngest of the bunch. Both Napoleon and Rupert had graduated from high school in Kentucky and were working in the coal mines along with their daddy, Malcom, who had been a miner for over twenty years. Napoleon and Rupert were regular size as Littbo would say, and somehow escaped the curse of the midgetry that Littbo himself struggled with.

Malcom had worked in the Eastern Kentucky coal mines forever. He started out in the coal camps and moved from camp to camp trying to improve his wages and the quality of life for the family. The work was back-breaking, the risks were high and the pay was never enough. The coal companies had refined the process over the years to keep the workers beholden to the company for rent on their ramshackle houses, goods from the stores, rental of the hand tools they needed to work and even the company-provided medical care. When you worked for a coal company there were no free benefits. The company may provide you with everything you needed, from shaving cream to shoe laces, but you paid for it. There was no opportunity to shop somewhere else. There wasn’t a somewhere else to begin with and certainly no way to get there if there was. They were locked in and couldn’t get out.

The Moneypenny family lived in one of the coal camp houses. They were lucky that they didn’t have to share the house with another family but unlucky that all six of them had to squeeze into the barely-adequate shack that the coal company called a house.

There were two levels